EP22: Entrepreneur Says The Faster You Fail, The Faster you Reach Success
Aaron Bare, a multi-talented entrepreneur who is co-founder of the Herozona Foundation, speaks on “The David Johnson Show” about an entrepreneur’s journey, which often involves failure more often in the early days, which lead to successes later on.
“To get to success, part of that equation is failure,” says Aaron. “The reality is, is I’ve failed at more businesses than I’ve been successful at. Some would say I’m successful, I can tell you there’s also people in this world that would say I’m a failure. Regardless, it’s moving forward, and, I think that’s the mindset and innovation around being exponential.”
“I think it’s the persistence and willpower of veterans to overcome failure,” adds Aaron. “ The reality is we shouldn’t really call it failure. Mistakes are learning opportunities, they are points to move forward. At the end of the day, the idea that you’ve thought you had to start a company is going to be completely different by the time it becomes a company. In that process you’re going to fail forward, but you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. The faster you fail, the faster you actually reach success.”
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David: [23:32] What could you tell veteran entrepreneurs that have something as far as resources? There’s a lot more resources out today in 2020 than 1995. Maybe the barrier to entry is a little bit lower, the cost of entry is a little bit lower, you could get a product to market, not just a product, meaning a website or an online product, but there’s a whole bunch of resources you have access to. Am I right on that?
Aaron: [23:54] Yeah. In 95 — this is actually in the book — it cost about five million dollars to create a startup. Fast forward to today, it costs about five thousand dollars to create that same startup.
David: [24:06] That’s a different barrier of entry.
Aaron: [24:08] It’s a 99 percent reduction in cost and time. That’s why you see there’ll be so much more failure, because it’s so easy to start a business.
David: [24:18] Failure is good to a certain extent, right?
Aaron: [24:19] Failure is good.
David: [24:20] Because?
Aaron: [24:21] Failure is good because, Edison failed so many times, Dyson failed so many times. To get to success part of that equation is failure. The reality is, is I’ve failed at more businesses than I’ve been successful at. Some would say I’m successful, I can tell you there’s also people in this world that would say I’m a failure. Regardless, it’s moving forward, and, I think that’s the mindset and innovation around being exponential.
[24:47] I think you tap into the second point here is, really being someone that is OK with failure to move forward, which is historically been something that Europeans and even Asians have really shunned that are now starting to open up, and that’s why you’re seeing them start to create some very large businesses.
David: [25:02] That could be a mindset in the military, saying, we can’t fail here, there’s a saying, “Failure is not an option.” Then you come to entrepreneurship and not only is it an option, you’re probably going to fail if you’re going to jump in.
Aaron: [25:18] I think it’s the persistence and willpower of veterans to overcome failure. The reality is we shouldn’t really call it failure. Mistakes are learning opportunities, they are points to move forward. At the end of the day, the idea that you’ve thought you had to start a company is going to be completely different by the time it becomes a company.